At the CCW class they had us shoot with our off hand and also in the dark. Surprisingly, at least to me, I could shoot fairly well in the dark but not at all well with my left hand. That's pretty bad, so I have since spent a little time shooting with the left hand. I'm not great at it, but even a little bit of practice made a huge difference. That's the nice thing about something you never practiced before, the tiniest bit of practice seems to pay huge dividends.

Some folks seem to think firearms require little training and no practice whatsoever in order to use them effectively in a life-or-death situation. This is a lie. An attractive lie, but a lie nonetheless.

Another attractive lie -- actually a half-truth -- is that you can teach yourself how to shoot. The complete truth is that if you want to learn to shoot safely, efficiently, and well, an experienced person can easily show you how to do things that will take you many years to learn on your own, and without the sidetrips into dangerously incompetent territory which teaching yourself often brings. Shooting is a physical skill, and thus really requires hands-on instruction for best results.

There's no sense in practicing doing something wrong. That just engrains bad habits that will need to be unlearned later.

Learn what you need to know from a competent and responsible instructor. Practice what you have learned until it becomes second nature. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You should train in all the primary skill sets FIRST until your skill levels are at a pretty good level, AND THEN train for other possibilities.

Practice strong-hand only and weak-hand only is worthwhile for a couple of reasons -- (1.) It prepares you for unusual circumstances, where you may be dealing with an injury or other situation which precludes the use of one hand, and (2.) Such practice can force you to focus on the basics all over again, which is good for your general skill development.

__________________You can only learn from experience if you pay attention!

Good point about concentrating on skills you have come to take for granted Jeff. In some ways anything you do with a gun(even cleaning for instance) increases your familiarity and therefore your overall comfort level. and therefore, hopefully, you skill.

Several years I had a fall and broke my wrist, my ribs and badly sprained my ankle. The wrist was my dominant hand.

Luckily or unluckily, I was signed up to take one of Karl Rehn's Advanced Tactical classes which focused on injured shooting, one handed reloading, etc. drills. See how well I planned for the class. I took it with my arm in cast and a harness on my ankle. I certainly profited from that class. I was also signed up for LFI-1 - Stress Fire and did that with the 'wrong hand' and cast on the other. I shot as well as some of the regular folks.

I also took a class from Steve Moses that had some of these procedures.

It did me a world of good. I carried on the other side till I could use my arm again with a degree of confidence. If I have to switch hands because you could fall down in a fight - no biggie. If I have to reload one handed I know how.

When I did fall, I drove myself to the hospital - stick shift (interesting drive) and then found out what I had broken. Wife came for me and then I happily went to bed with a dopey Rx. The ER sucked, BTW. Sat there for hours watching the Drs and nurses just chat.

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